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Wednesday 13 December 2000

The World Today is a comprehensive current affairs program which backgrounds, analyses, interprets and encourages debate on events and issues of interest and importance to all Australians. Below is the program summary with links to transcripts and audio (if available).

Backlash over Govt's airport decision

The Howard Government has been accused of putting politics before national good, with its announcement to stall yet again on the proposed second Sydney Airport, and drop the fast train to Canberra. The decision to stall plans at Badgery's Creek, and to expand a fully privatised Sydney and Bankstown Airport system, is seen as protecting the narrowly held electorates of one of its own backbenchers, while damaging Labor in several others.

Regional implications of airport decision

What are the implications looking at regional Australia? While John Anderson says regional commuters will not be disadvantaged, one of his National Party parliamentary colleagues says she's suspicious and cynical about the move to shelve the second airport plan.

Qld transport shining

You could excuse the Queensland Labor Government for feeling a little smug as all of this goes on. Giving the drubbing it's been taking in the electoral rorts affair over recent weeks, the transport decisions being argued out in the daylight savings states are an early Christmas present for Peter Beattie. As uncertainty fills the southern states over the shelving of the $12 million worth of transport projects, Queensland is, if you'll pardon my pun, on full steam ahead.

Australian economy slowing

While the Australian economy may still be growing above 4 per cent, on further statistical evidence today, there's no doubt that it is slowing down. That's the picture emerging from the national accounts released this morning by the ABS.

GMH chooses Victoria for new plant

The car maker, General Motors Holden, has chosen Victoria as the location for its new $400 million V6 World Engine Plant. The multi-national carmaker chose Victoria at the end of a fierce bidding war with South Australia, and of course a lot of competition from global markets. As Luisa Saccotelli tells us there will be 1,000 direct jobs, and an important boost for Victorian industrial suppliers.

Hulls happy with Holden's decision

SA Premier diplomatic over GMH decision

The GMH decision is another win for Victoria, of course, over South Australia in what is becoming an on-going tit for tat rivalry with manufacturing. Over the past couple of months South Australia has enticed the whitegoods manufacturer Email out of Melbourne to come into Adelaide to set up. As well as the Melbourne operations of BAE, British Aerospace. South Australian Premier John Olsen says that the decision for GM to go in Victoria is the growing rivalry between the two States.

Analysts predict shaky future for Holden

Industry analysts believe the decision by General Motors is not the last shake-up that the company will see. Over the next couple of years General Motors is to rationalise plants in the United States and Europe, shedding about 10 per cent of its workforce there and that will increase global nervousness, no doubt, in their plants.

Future of Australian fisheries unknown

As well as those transport advances that we spoke about earlier, Queensland has fish on its mind today. The state government has released its east coast trawl plan which aims to cap the fishery at 1996 levels. And after initially pledging $10 million to this new scheme, the Federal Government is now threatening to withhold the money concerned that the plan, put forward by Queensland, doesn't go far enough to reduce effects of trawling on the Great Barrier Reef.

Burma allows EU meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi

Well, Burma's military junta has agreed to allow European union delegation to have a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. The commitment comes following a meeting this week in Laos, the first between EU Ministers and the Association of South East Asian Nations since Burma was admitted to ASEAN three years ago. The European Union claims the commitment amounts to a relaxation of the recent military junta restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her National League for Democracy.

Victorian community moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

International politics may have stalled Australia's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but in a fine example of country resourcefulness, a Victorian regional community has decided to take the fight literally down to grass roots.